BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.14, No.1, 2023 1764 

 

 

 

 

The Relation between Academic Performance and 

Academic Self-Efficacy in Primary School Students: 

The Mediating Role of Academic Stress and 

Self-Esteem and Gender Differences 

By Li, W. H. & Jiang, F. 
Correspondence to: Wenhui Li, Shenyang Normal University, China. E-mail: 

llwwhh1984@126.com  

CADEMIC self-efficacy includes the individual’s confidence in their 

capacity for learning, self-assessment of their competence in utilizing 

their acquired skills to complete learning tasks, and subjective evaluation of 

their ability to control learning behavior and results. Primary school students 

are at a crucial stage in the development of academic self-efficacy. Success-

ful cultivation of academic self-efficacy at this phase has a significant and 

positive effect on their academic attainment. 

Adopting convenience sampling, this study investigated 145 fourth 

graders (72 boys), 121 fifth graders (60 boys), and 138 six graders (70 boys) 

from three randomly selected classes of each grade in a primary school in 

Huanggu district of Shenyang City. The academic stress questionnaire, aca-

demic self-efficacy questionnaire, self-esteem scale and students’ academic 

results of the nearest final examination were used to evaluate the impact of 

academic performance on student academic self-efficacy, the chain mediat-

ing effect of academic stress and self-esteem, and the moderating effect of 

gender.  

The research findings showed that: (1) Academic performance could 

positively predict academic self-efficacy among primary school students. (2) 

Academic stress and self-esteem posed chain mediating effects on the rela-

tionship between academic performance and academic self-efficacy. (3) 

There were gender differences in the chain mediating effects. Among girl 

students, there was a partial mediating effect and three mediating paths, in-

cluding the separate mediating effect of academic stress, the separate mediat-

ing effect of self-esteem, and the chain mediating effect of academic stress 

and self-esteem; among boy students, there was a complete mediating effect 

and two mediating paths, namely the separate mediating effect of self-esteem 

and the chain mediating effect of academic stress and self-esteem. 

 

 

Source: Journal of Psychological Science, 2023;46(2):347-354. 

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